Aaah sunshine!

This was taken just the other side of our garden fence on Friday night. I can't wait till the weather warms up properly and we have a few more evenings like this...

Wedding cushions

One of the sewing projects I missed the opportunity to document during my blogging hiatus were my Wedding Cushions. I made three of these last year for various friends who were getting married, tweaking slightly as I went along.

As always I think it took till the third attempt (above) to perfect them. I quilted the front of the first one (extra work, no real gain) and used the red fabric for the reverse on cushion one and two, until I managed to work out what the fabric I'd been using for the front was (it's Essex Linen) and where to get more of it. (The Eternal Maker)

I'm happy with the result (particularly the third one!) but it's always difficult to know how well handmade gifts are received. Even my own sister is guilty of an unintended lackluster response to a handmade gift, which only years later I discovered she had absolutely loved after I stopped making said item due to the lukewarm response she gave! Gah!

Pillow Talk Swap

I've just signed up for the next round of the Pillow Talk Swap on Flickr and this is my inspiration mosaic for my swap partner.

In the last swap I took part in, I received this gorgeous cushion from Lee which now has pride of place in our sitting room.

On that occasion it was a mixed swap where you choose a table runner, mini quilt, cushion or sewing machine cover.

I have to admit the pillow swap seems a lot fairer as you give the same as you receive. I already have a few ideas in my head for my partners pillow (cushion!) I'm just waiting to find out who she is and what she likes...

Neighbourhood quilt

There is nothing quite as satisfying as finally starting a quilt which has been on your to do list for over a year. I first saw the design that inspired this quilt just after Theo was born and immediately bought a half metre of the Alexander Henry fabric that the quilt was based around...

I spent more than 12 months procrastinating and trying to decide whether to use the faces as part of a train design, or as the drivers of cars and every time I took something out of my fabric stash I'd see the Faces Around The World fabric taunting me. In the end I've gone for a very similar design to the original, but I'm incorporating trees and working with a more ordered palette of fabrics.



This is the first row almost complete (I need to add a strip of blue to the top) and I'm working on the houses for the second row as we speak.



I'm intending to make 4 rows in total. Possibly with a border to frame it all and I'm going to experiment with wadding. After years of using only cotton wadding, I fancy something with a bit more loft for this to make it more snuggly, so I've ordered some samples to experiment with.

Rebirth

After a 9 month hiatus, it feels like the time has come to start blogging again. Once again there has been a change of location for us (we're on the Sussex coast now) and so a new name was obligatory. My future posts are likely to focus on photography, quilts and design, they might not be as frequent, but I'll try to keep them interesting.

Time for a change....

source

 
I've decided the time has come to make a few changes to my online presence. Five years ago when I started this blog I didn't sew, I didn't quilt, I hadn't discovered Flickr, or Pinterest or GoodReads or Twitter. I didn't own an SLR camera and I didn't have a photography blog to maintain. Other than Facebook (which hardly anyone was on) my blog was pretty much my only way to communicate with the world. Over the last half decade I have been spreading myself more and more thinly and I've decided to do an audit, which means the time is right to stop blogging here.

I'm not disappearing entirely. You can still follow my photography blog at claremansell.com and if you are a Flickr user I'd love you to add me as a contact and keep up to date with me and my family's activities through my photostream (I'm making a conscious effort to post photos with more text) I have considered doing a Tumblr blog, and may yet, but for now this blog is being mothballed. Thank you for all your support and comments and for stopping by and reading, it has always been much appreciated...

PS - For those of you who have been hanging on to see if I was correct about my blogger-friend's baby name, she's still yet to have it, but I shall post an update on my Flickr photostream to let you know if I was right when she does!

Theo at 10 months!

So another month gone and a steep learning process has begun, as in the last week Theo has begun to pull himself upright. Those extra few inches of elevation over the world have made him rather keen to view things from that height more permanently, but the leg muscles and the confidence are not quite there yet!

We bought him a doggy walker second-hand, which he has really taken to and there's a push along brick trolly I had as a child on the way to us from my sister too.

Talking of wooden bricks, I'm pretty convinced they are the best toy ever. Theo spends a lot of his day chasing them round the house, chewing them or banging them against things and I still have memories of playing with mine when I was about 10! Nice that some toys never go out of fashion.

Last week Theo's paternal grandfather came over from Cyprus to visit, it's the first time he's seen him since he was less than a month old, so quite a change. Theo just loved having a new person in the house to entertain him and provide a new distraction. As always it brings home how far away we are from all his relatives, but nothing is forever, and though we're still 600 miles away from the closest ones, we have gradually been creeping closer over the last 5 years!

Food wise, Theo is starting to get bored with being spoon fed which is challenging our well honed system of freezing portions of meals for him. Last night he had fish fingers and carrot slices, but we need to raid the kiddie cookery books for ideas of quick and simple meals. Fortunately there's one thing we can always get down him no matter how tired or bored he is. He's absolutely addicted to blueberries and strawberries, I swear he'd eat them all day if I let him!

Unsurprisingly with his new exertions, he's still sleeping pretty well. Anything between 90 minutes and 3 hours at lunchtime and about 12 hours overnight. I don't want to jinx things, but it's been a long, long time since we've been woken at night...

And finally his impressive flight tally continues to grow, as we shuttle backwards and forwards between the south-coast and Scotland. There's another flight booked for a fortnight's time and we'll be spending his birthday down south too, so that'll be 10 flights before he's one. In comparison, I don't think I'd managed 1 flight before my 10th birthday, but of course that was long before Easyjet!